Posted
by
timothyon Thursday January 26, 2012 @05:25PM
from the so-stay-in-that-cage dept.

Diggester writes "Back in July 2010, the United States government approved a few exemptions in a federal law which made jailbreaking/rooting of electronic devices (iPhones and Android devices) legal. The court ruling stated that every three years, the exemptions have to be renewed considering they don't infringe any copyrighted material. The three-year period is due to expire and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking to get the exemptions renewed. In order to do so, they have filed a petition which aims at government to declare jailbreaking legal once again. In addition to that, EFF is also asking for a change in the original ruling to include tablet devices." Here's the EFF's own page on the issue.

The crazier the intellectual property laws get the less respect people will have for intellectual property laws. I care quite a bit, but at this point it may be easier to just let "big content" hang themselves.

The crazier the intellectual property laws get the less respect people will have for intellectual property laws.

I'm not sure how much less respect people can have for "intellectual property laws".

Any possibility for respect was wasted when "95 years from publication or 120 years from creation whichever is shorter" became the length of a copyright. Or when advocates for "intellectual property" sought penalties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading songs via bittorrent.

There just isn't a compelling reason why anyone should respect copyright laws. Especially considering how little of the financial benefit of those laws actually goes to the creator.

Especially considering how little of the financial benefit of those laws actually goes to the creator.

The copyright length is definitely absurd (I'd argue in most cases 2-3 years would allow recovering the investment made into it and the majority of future profits), and removing casual copying of content probably would not result in much of an increase in sales, I agree. But it is still a huge benefit to content creators in one way - it keeps organized, commercial piracy (that is so common in Asian countries) to a minimum in many countries.

Imagine if there were *no* laws against copying someone else's work - say anyone could legally copy a studio's movie print and show it in their own theater, or copy DVDs, CDs, or books and sell them in a retail store along side the "official" copies, etc. Those copiers don't have to make back the time and money put into creating the work, only the trivial cost of duplicating it. I'd call preventing that a definite financial benefit to the creator...

Imagine if there were *no* laws against copying someone else's work - say anyone could legally copy a studio's movie print and show it in their own theater, or copy DVDs, CDs, or books and sell them in a retail store along side the "official" copies, etc.

Is that what's happening? Do you see pirated DVDs and CDs on the shelves at Best Buy? Can you tell me which theaters are showing pirated films?

Why do the apologists for the ridiculous "intellectual property" laws always have to go to imaginary scenarios to try to make their case?

In the real world, can you provide proof that artists are making less money because of illegal copies than they would have if there had been no illegal copies? Because I can show you the opposite. Yes, I can show you instances of artists who would have made much less money if their work had not been passed around on torrent sites.

Hell, there are artists who got their start by distributing their work on bittorrent sites. Without that "illegal copying" those artists would never have gotten a record contract.

So, if you can lay out some evidence that the violation of copyright is actually lessening artists' incomes, then we can talk. Until then, I maintain that the current "intellectual property" laws do more harm than good - for customers and artists alike.

Talk about "whoosh". GP said that this is what would happen if there were no IP laws, not that it is what is happening today.

Yes, in countries that meet the criteria specified in the post you responded to, and even quoted: places where there are "*no* [effective] laws against copying somebody else's work" such as many of the Asian nations I've been to (Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, etc.), and a lot of Africa as well. Also certain parts of South America, though it's slightly less widespread there (in my experience).

Do you see pirated DVDs and CDs on the shelves at Best Buy?

Well, they don't have Best Buy in those countries, but everywhere that you can buy a CD or DVD, from a streetside vendor's cart to a chain of media retailers with a presense in most large malls, is selling mostly if not entirely pirated CDs and DVDs, yes.

Can you tell me which theaters are showing pirated films?

In those countries? (Almost?) all of them. The hard part would be finding one which *isn't* doing so. The better ones will use copies that were made with something better than a handheld video camera pointed at the screen, but it will still have stupid things like subtitles in a language nobody in the country speaks (not English).

You'll also find photocopied "books" printed on standard-size paper and bound with plastic rings, CDs/DVDs listing 5 different popular pieces of software plus cracks and/or keygens, and copies of well-known photos or other graphical art (either in printed form or in bulk on a CD).

The interesting thing about all this copyright-ignored media is that, aside from a few pieces from successful "locals" (literally, fewer than ten per nation), it's produced elsewhere in the world - in the US, Canada, the EU, NZ, or Australia, typically - because in such countries it's feasible for people to actually make a living creating such content.

Why do the apologists for the ridiculous "intellectual property" laws always have to go to imaginary scenarios to try to make their case?

What do you have to smoke that you can quote somebody's post, including the conditions under which it is stted to apply and still completely fail to understand that it is not being stated to apply universally? Are you one of those idiot Americans (I'm a US citizen myself, for the record) who thinks that the USA is the entire world, or are you simply completely deluded?

Hell, there are artists who got their start by distributing their work on bittorrent sites. Without that "illegal copying" those artists would never have gotten a record contract.

You can't even construct a logical argument out of your own words, never mind when using anybody else's. If the copyright owner is putting the content online for redistribution, it's hardly "illegal copying" anymore. Copyright law allows for the owner of the copyright to distribute their works however they like.

You are pointing at countries where peoples average monthly salary is less than a BR or a trip to the movies (Denmark) and saying "hey lookie lookie, no IP laws and pirates are rampant".

Personally I belive IP laws are killing competition and producing worse content. Most of those illegal copies you mention are crap and will be bought by those who can't afford the real thing anyways. Make big companies compete with the pirates and soon you will see products consumers want, e.g. DVDs that goes straight to the

I do care, but I speak with my money. I buy phones that the manufacturer allows me to hack / modify. 'fastboot oem unlock' is a glorious thing. I'd rather give money to a company that allows me to do what I want than fight the more controlling companies.

With the mess of protocols (CDMA2000 vs. GSM/UMTS), bands (AWS vs. standard), and plans (no discount for not taking a subsidized phone) that is the U.S. cell phone market, do you have a plan for making this practical in the United States?

As someone who recently jailbroke his iPad2, its one of the best things to ever happen to my iPad!

I bought a WiFi only model - as for my purposes, the onboard GPS is *very* substandard. When then trying to use a normal bluetooth GPS, I find out that you need a GPS that speaks "Apple" at $99USD + shipping to your country. After the jailbreak, a $5 donation to the guy who wrote a part of a bluetooth driver and bingo, now it works with ANY bluetooth GPS.

Theres also this awesome extension called "Mail Extender" that adds all the features that mail clients have developed over the last 10 years when Apple decided that you shall not send anything but plain text emails.

Thankfully, I live in a country where console modchips and other methods for device compatibility are 100% legal - and tested in court.

I'd rather give money to a company that allows me to do what I want than fight the more controlling companies.

You have no choice. Look at the primary opponent of this: Apple. Look at their results. You cannot simply avoid them, their influence on the market is so stupidly huge that even if you don't buy their product, they can still directly impact your ability to choose other options in the future.

Interesting. The iPhone Reality Distortion Field is, in fact, the tidal gravitation zone of their humongous black hole's event horizon. The entire smartphone industry is stuck in the iPhone accretion disk, and there's almost no escape.

Agreed. Although with "who cares" I meant that we just shouldn't obey all these irrational laws they vote since most of them are written to either fuck us (the people) or serve some specific financial lobby, or both.

The question is are your action out of Love or Selfishness.Out of concern for the common good , or just being a tool.

If you are actually looking to create a better world around you people will have more respect for your position,even if they don't agree with it, they are still likely to jail, crucify or otherwise attack you, but your actions will have slow effect towards justice and you might have a chance at changing things because, often times people know when they are wrong even if they don't admit it.

If your motivations are selfish than it will show too and no-body will listen to you because you aren't just being a cry baby when you put in jail for doing what you knew was illegal.

That's the real problem with the occupy movement, they don't offer solutions , only complaints, they aren't making any useful demands on what would actually make things better, based on concern for the public good, they are simply saying they don't like the way things are.

News flash, nobody likes the way things are, the world will never be perfect this side of the grave.

Agreed. Although with "who cares" I meant that we just shouldn't obey all these irrational laws they vote since most of them are written to either fuck us (the people) or serve some specific financial lobby, or both.

The copyright lobby has not dropped SOPA/PIPA. Even a watered-down version of these could make it very difficult for communities to develop around rooting/jailbreaking phones so that, unless you can figure out your own jailbreak, you may not be able to download the information and binaries req

You care. Because not only is it illegal for you to jailbreak, it is illegal for someone else to help you. As in to provide the tools to do the jailbreaking. So unless you are an uberhacker, you won't be doing much jailbreaking.

They've just never had a chance to challenge the issue directly. The courts have sidestepped this as much as possible to narrowly rule on technicalities. The truth is, prior restraint isn't suddenly invalid as a defense because of the DMCA but courts are always very hesitant to fight against laws created by congress. Isn't it great? Even in the supreme court. This is how broken our system of branches of gov't is as it exists.

Somehow, I don't think illegality will stop people from creating the tools or finding ways to disseminate them. Call me crazy since we already know how locked down things are on the Internet and nothing illegal ever happens.

Just because the laws are bad doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix them. You might think that it won't have any effect, just wait until people get convicted for posting jailbreaking methods or linking to those posts.

The problem are the people who are creating the tools. If creation, or possession of the tools becomes illegal, or advocation and instruction on how to use them becomes illegal... then all those websites you can easily "google" today to learn how to do it will VANISH.

You're welcome to reinvent the wheel in your basement, but more than likely you'll simply saying "fuckit" and move on...

In the vast majority of cases, unless the owner of the device has considerable spare time and skills far outside the norm, their ability to do what they want with their device depends largely on the public availability of tools for doing so. Those tools are the ones that are most likely to get harder to find should their legal status shift(architecturally, prosecuting individuals who tamper with a GUID-bearing, cellular-modem-connected, user-account-data-correlated, device would actually be comparatively practical, make one mistake in your jailbreak, hit a tripwire or a tilt-bit somewhere, and run the risk that the hardware will phone home and report you; but unlikely to be a good PR move...)

Against a complex system, you are only as good as your tools, which becomes a much greater limitation if those become contraband.

You will care when you cant access any tools to do it if they are all blocked, and perhaps even be logged that you tried to access the tools, or if you get them and succeed in jail breaking your service goes dark and a warrant is automatically issued.( it can be detected by the carriers if its a cell phone ya know.. )

So, where do I get all the tools that geohot wrote, so that I can jailbreak my PS3?

The problem with software being illegal is that it makes it harder to get that software, which discourages people who might have done so otherwise. I have no problem finding the PS3 jailbreaking tools, but a lot of other people would. Further, do you really want hackers to be arrested, deported, and so forth just for writing or distributing such tools? Do you really want to have to go on Tor or Freenet to find them?

Why would something that is legal now suddenly become illegal after three years? Can anyone explain why, something should ever suddenly become legal after being ruled legal for a 'duration of three years'? Is it so the government makes sure they have something to do?

The DMCA makes circumventing digital security illegal - and this could include jailbreaking your phone / tablet / computer if it ever comes to that.It has a provision for making exceptions, but unlike the DMCA the exceptions only last for three years. If they're not renewed they automatically lapse.

Yes, wouldn't it be nice if the DMCA had a sunset provision too? Personally, I think all new laws should have sunset provisions without some sort of actual constitutional amendment-like system to make them permanent. I also think they should need to be read in their entirety, on record in the house and senate before they get to vote on them every time.

- Jailbreaking breaks the security on the iPhone, thus putting the tools in violation of the DMCA- The LoC granted an exception to the DMCA for jailbreaking tools in the interest of enabling compatibility.

It's part of the DMCA, and its complete and total pro-corporate bias. All you jailbreaking Apple fans should watch as Apple fights the exemption renewal. They hate you and want you back in the box, and to never talk about it.

The reason that it expires (just like a lot of tax loopholes) is so that another round of fund raising can begin for both sides of a divisive issue.Setting it to expire is how they keep the campaign coffers full.It is the government version of vendor lock in.

It's a property of the legal system that mandates laws to have a start date and allows for an optional expire date. This is mostly used to limit the duration of an executive order or decree, but it's not limited to just that.

And one of those two could be Newt Gingrich! Says everything about the process of picking candidates. Look at his record on marriage, lobbying/money, racist [food-stamp president, what sort of shit is that?], together with levels of hypocrisy beyond invention. Incredible. The idea of President Gingrich was laughable 10 years ago. What changed?

There is something just heartbreakingly pathetic at the notion that the EFF is going to have to petition to get further devices included, distinguished largely by shape from those originally included, rather than it being a given that the device you buy, you own.

Perversely, I sometimes wonder if the situation would be improved if makers of 'traditional' categories of objects, like cars and appliances and firearms, were to start getting their DRM on and building systems that cryptographically verify every FRU's TPM on start and enter a lockout that can only be cleared by an authorized dealer if any tampering is suspected... Yeah, it'd make those product categories horribly worse; but it might finally give the computer-clueless some idea of just how insane the world of EULAs, DRM, and assorted device lockdown really is...

Perfect phrase!.gov pulverizes us with new copyright treaties, then we have to ASK to KEEP the exceptions! Trouble is, y'all have followed the pace of things, the climate is WAY worse than 3 years ago - the Corp-Gov hydra is smelling blood and wants to go for the kill.

I sometimes wonder if the situation would be improved if makers of 'traditional' categories of objects, like cars... verify every FRU's TPM on start and enter a lockout that can only be cleared by an authorized dealer if any tampering is suspected.

They already do that. Though, I guess "lip mode" may not fully qualify as a "lockout".

On the one hand you can in many jurisdictions legally shoot (take the life of) someone that trespasses your land/ house or car and on the other hand you can be locked up for modifying your own paid for appliance.

While the outside world has for many years thought the USofA was the most materialistic nation on earth...

Amazing indeed. A place where a company is legally prosecuted for antitrust, for not allowing to uninstall their browser. Yet other companies attack their customers for trying to uninstall or modify any other part of their system.

Acer makes an open game console. It's called the Aspire X1 [acer.com], it's about the size of an original Xbox 360 and can use its gamepads, and it runs all PC software. And unlike the major consoles, it has multiple app stores: Steam, Impulse, Desura, and GOG. There's even an adapter called the Retrode that lets it play classic games made for the Super NES and Sega Genesis.

Ahh but thats the catch. They won't tell you that and just stick introducing laws for the software parts of the hardware. You want to mod the phone to run an OS other than the one that came with it, sorry to bad its illegal to remove the drm inorder to remove the original os. Imagine the out cry if all of a sudden you couldn't do ANYTHING with the physical part of the device.

If you buy such a device, it's your property. However, in order to do anything useful, you'll either need to flash the device yourself (this lets you *replace* the software, which is legal), or agree to the software license and then circumvent the software somehow -- and the software does NOT belong to you -- it belongs to the copyright holder, and they let you run it on your device.

If you can reflash (hardware reflash, not software reflash via the software already provided by the manufacturer) the device and install some other system on it, DMCA isn't broken.

Kind of like you can buy a car, but circumventing the on-board software is illegal. Same went for buying a printer and hacking the firmware to let you use any printer cartridge, until this got an exemption for compatibility reasons.

Most often the way it works is:The physical hardware is yours, The software isn't.You just get a license to run the software. The license usually includes clauses specifically against reverse-engineering or circumnavigating any part of the software or its 'security measures'.Then they simply find a way to make it that you have to agree to be bound by the licence terms in order to use the product.orb) By even turning on the product, you automatically have signified your acceptance of being bound by the licen

Even if someone intervenes and solves this legal issue, I don't think that's good enough. Having access to tinker and enhance is the reason these devices exist at all.

Imagine if 90s PCs were crippled this way. Would Linux, or its multibillion dollar server industry even exist? Apache? Tomcat? Free software can't survive in such a hostile environment. The anti-intellectualism must stop.

While we do have the ability to call the shots, I suggest that the next GPL revision include an additional clause:

Redistribution privileges granted by the GPLv4 are revoked from all manufacturers who ship devices that don't provide to the end user an easy, supported method of superuser privilege escalation.

The good news is, it would have two effects. Smart vendors would fix their devices to comply. The evil ones would fork the kernel and anything else using the new license, and eventually die off without community support.

Remember. We have the money, and we have the power. Not Hollywood. Hollywood is irrelevant.

The GPLv3 effectively does require that. It bars the use of GPLv3 software in things that require jailbreaking, or otherwise keep the user trapped and unable to rebuild and replace the GPLv3 binaries. Slightly different terminology, but same effect (the anti-TiVOization clause.)

Having access to tinker and enhance is the reason these devices exist at all.

Not quite. However, that should be something all users are able to do without interference from the manufacturer.

Smart vendors would fix their devices to comply. The evil ones would fork the kernel and anything else using the new license, and eventually die off without community support.

WRT GPLv3, they're already not using the GNU coreutils. And the Linux kernel will never be anything but GPLv2.

We have the money, and we have the power. Not Hollywood. Hollywood is irrelevant.

But you don't have someone like Chris Dodd, who can go on Fox News and threaten congressmen for not standing up to the American populace to force bad laws through.

How about "EFF working to keep jailbreaking legal" as a headline? The OP (who has also linked to the article on his own retarded ad-filled site) is just sensationalising this shit to attract traffic / improve his pagerank. Better stories are available here [pcmag.com] and elsewhere [engadget.com].

The fact is that Apple would see all jailbreaking be illegal if it were up to them.

The original title is an accurate portrayal of the situation better capturing the fact that jailbreaking would otherwise be illegal. It took consumer lobbying to be declared legal and it will lapse into being illegal again without active consumer lobbying.

This has to be done repeatedly.

The RC could still declare jailbreaking illegal again despite of what the EFF does.

Upgrading a car stereo, getting suits tailored, Changing filters in air conditioners, Showering night club stamps off, Changing shoe laces, Singing along with a CD/mp3, Photoshop, Opening a computer... I mean, why would I have the right to root the cell phone/tablet I buy. Imagine if I enabled tethering, the world might end right then and there.

The solution to all this is simple, wrap your money in a EULA and a plastic bag which says "Opening this bag and depositing the money constitutes acceptance of the Monetary Remuneration End User License Agreement", and then use the EULA to state what the recipient can and cannot do with the money. They *can* use it to give their employees a raise, the *cannot* use it to buy Jaguars and Jacuzzis, etc. Personally, I'd vote for putting some really whacked-out stuff in there, just to get even a bit. Like maybe

You sound more informed in the area than I: Have any vehicle manufacturers taken to using emissions regulations to add legal teeth to their DRM, in the way that Lexmark tried with printer cartridges and the DMCA, or a fair number of wireless device vendors use FCC regulations to justify a binary regulatory firmware?

1 - because you are under contract with a carrier's network and they are requiring it to protect their network2 - beacuse some industries are fighting for it to protect their content ( like mpaa/riaa )3 - keep you coming back only to their store for content.

Android on the phones without a locked bootloader (like all Google-released Android phones) also allows just as much freedom.

That's a large reason why Blackberry's dead - if you really want it your freedom, Android can do it. Android even gives you the freedom of releasing a locked-down device, which is why Android sometimes isn't as free.